Whenever I see pseudoscientific conspiracy theories about ancient aliens or giant petrified trees or ice age satellites or whatever it drives me crazy because THE EARTH IS COOL ENOUGH JUST AS IT IS! WE DON’T NEED TO REACH FOR REASONS TO MAKE IT MORE INTERESTING! HAVE YOU SEEN A TULLY MONSTER??!!

ntroduce yourself with 5 concerts you've been to Koko Taylor and Buddy Guy They Might Be Giants Violent Femmes Fairport Convention Philip Glass (+1) Squirrel Nut Zippers

An animated graphic showing wingbeats of different birds. This one is so beautiful. Image: Eleanor Lutz tabletopwhale.com/2014/09/29/f...

A thing I think about a lot is how the hyper powerful and tech billionaires want to be seen as people saving humanity, which is why they create space companies to send us to Mars and invest in gen AI to render us more "productive" And yet, not a single one is working to solve climate change.

PRI REACHED THEIR GOAL!!! MUSEUM OF THE EARTH IS STAYING OPEN!!! Thank you all so much for donating and spreading the word, I'm so overjoyed! Good things are still possible! www.priweb.org/blog-post/pr...

An (ecto)parasitic #Crustmas. This is Dolops (above), which swims around and attaches to fishes (below), but unlike its relative Argulus, which has suckers, it has hooks to hold on. Also, is bizarrely cute! 🧪🦑

What I'm reading: The breeding plumage of male golden pheasants is beautiful, but blinds them to dangers from above. (This isn't true for the females.) The authors suggest it might be a 'handicap' letting males advertise their fitness to potential mates. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (either War or Trek), LOTR, or Marvel.

These Enoploteuthid are so colorful. Nice look at the chromatophores. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 874 #asgardarchaea #MarineLife

From the first moment I met you, your arrogance and conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others made me realize that you were the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry, Charlie Brown.

The only winning move is not to play, Charlie Brown.

There's an enormous dead sperm whale on the beach in Nantucket. Fortunately, 55 years ago we learned what NOT to do to deal with it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CL...

Can’t believe the whole country has to suffer through the return of Dickensian childhood diseases because the worst, most ignorant attention-demanders decided other people’s expertise makes them feel bad

The Casper octopus gets its nickname from its lack of pigment cells, which gives it a ghostly appearance. Discovered in 2016 more than 4,000 meters below the ocean surface off Hawai’i, it is the deepest-known octopus without fins.

The notebook I'm using for my sketch workshop today also has my notes from the Monsterotica Romantasy Biology Class dragoncon panel in it, and last night I hung out with @dianeakelly.bsky.social nerding out about echidna genitals. Poor sweet Kevin McDonald might be in for some real weird sketches 😂

Recent paper from our lab on the puncture performance of hemipene spines in snakes! Some are like cat claws, others barely puncture. A single species can have many different spine morphologies and thousands of spines! 🧪 🐍 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

The German company that makes the mechanical ladder used in the Louvre heist has used the image to advertise, with the text 'When you need to move fast' 10/10 response, no notes

Two slugs mating. Collecting material for the next #invertefest ;) #biology #wildlife #invertebrates

Hot Water Balloon xkcd.com/3153/

i feel like i need to share this oldie but a goodie today

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Boxes also work on bobcats

Caterpillar Absolem feasting on Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum)

This is my 1st time catching my pet archer fish, Legolas, spitting on camera. Archerfish use modified jaw and tongue bones to fire a jet of water to knock down bugs from over hanging vegetation. Here Legolas is shooting down a fruit fly 🪰 🐠🧪

I’m really really really glad that @lilolmoi.bsky.social is still here to write this.

Post you from a different era

Irruption.

Nature research paper: Co-option of an ancestral cloacal regulatory landscape during digit evolution go.nature.com/3K576D7

Oh to be a little Tardigrade scratching its back on a bubble. 🫧🐻🧪

Just woke up from a social media pause and the first thing I see is an incredible footage of a sperm whale casually cruising with a giant squid in its mouth ?? 🦑 🌊 🌿

News in the history of molecular biology. The Science History Institute in Philadelphia has acquired a huge archive of correspondence and other scientific material from the pioneers of molecular biology (Franklin, Klug, Perutz, Delbrück etc, with items from Crick and Watson, too). 1/n

If you are wondering whether or not you can get a COVID vaccine, wonder no more… 🧪#MedSky

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪 From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

100% agree.

Yes, it was carefully hidden in the New England Journal of Medicine. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... ) 1/2

"It took her nearly two decades to find a permanent academic position. She found occasional work as a visiting professor, filling in for someone on leave for a year or two. She earned grants to fund her research... but she was often living on unemployment benefits" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/s...

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

I realize broad science-literacy problems cannot generally be solved just by shoving more facts at people but I really wish more people understood that the entire purpose and mechanism of a vaccine is to educate your OWN immune system, making it about the most "natural" medical intervention possible

New fish paper! We found that Clinocottus globicpes eats anemones (weird!) using a novel wrestling behavior + strong jaws that likely started as adaptations for tearing algae. It also has thick skin that protects it from stinging cells. @jzoology.bsky.social 🐟🧪 DM for PDF. doi.org/10.1111/jzo....

The OG sexy, sarcastic nerd icon ... the Earth will miss you, Tom Lehrer. #rip www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDE...

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

Happy World Snake Day! This day is dedicate to raising awareness of the beauty, diversity, and ecological value of these amazing and often misunderstood reptiles. Here’s the skull of a python created for my book, The Dissection of Vertebrates. #snake #SciArt #WorldSnakeDay #skull

Need a mobile home? An incubation chamber? Dinner? 100s of species have hit on an elegant solution: find a nice juicy critter—and turn it into a zombie. My latest 'Just So' for @nzgeo.bsky.social with hilarious cartoons (as usual) by @giselledraws.bsky.social #scicomm www.nzgeo.com/stories/host...

This is a good time to remember that Moas, Emus, and the other ratites diverged so long ago, they FLEW to different continents, and then lost the ability to fly and became giants independently. You can't just sprinkle a few variants to make one into the other. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

In the wake of the USAID funding cuts, nonprofit org Wildlife Conservation Network is working to connect community based conservationists with funders around the world. In my conversation with CEO JG Collomb he explains WCN's philosophy, and why he encourages funding without strings attached:

We cannot scicomm our way out of this, part …I-don’t-know-I’m-tired-of-counting

It's all about the words and the words in the first 49 issues of LCRW came from the writers whose name are on the cover of the 50th issue: smallbeerpress.com/lcrw/2025/05...

Did you know that a study of lizard venom led to the development of Wegovy and Ozempic? American Scientist explains how even the most obscure research can lead to life-changing results.